Many modern bowling lane establishments are in constant operation, 24 hours of every day. As these establishments usually have a great many bowling lanes, often 50 or more, each generally is equipped with an automatic pinsetter. The pinsetters automatically clear the lanes of bowling pins which have been knocked down after the first ball of each frame and set ten pins after each frame. It is usually very difficult for the proprietor of a modern bowling lane establishment to determine accurately the actual use his lanes receive. Even if each pinsetter is provided with an individual counter for recording the number of frames or games bowled, a substantial amount of time is required in reading each of the many counters in totaling the sum of all the counters. Obviously, an accurate up to the minute count cannot be made of the actual number of frames played on all the lanes when relying on individual counters at each pinsetter because of the time involved in making the count.
It has therefore been proposed to use a single counter indicator that would indicate the number of games played in the entire establishment. The particular approach taken fed frame signals from each pinsetter to corresponding ten position stepping switches each of which was arranged to generate one output signal each time ten frame signals had been received from an associated pinsetter. The output signals from each of the stepping switches were then fed to a single mechanical counter-indicator which accumulated the number of pulses received from each stepping switch and indicated the number of the same as indicative of the number of games played in the entire establishment based on the assumption that ten frames on each lane constituted one game.
This approach, while successful, has not been totally satisfactory due to the cost of the equipment. Specifically, the cost of providing a stepping switch for each lane is prohibitive. Furthermore, because the approach is principally an electromechanical one, reliability is not as high as desired.